RU faculty member empowers female inmates

I had the opportunity last week to film an event at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, NJ. The event, titled "Share the Wealth Expo Day", was the culmination of Community 101, a 14-week education/enrichment program being run at the facility. Dr. Nancy Wolff, director of the university's Center for Behavioral Health Services & Criminal Justice Research, runs the course and invited me to the Expo Day to see what it was all about.

Dr. Wolff is an economist by training, and she spent some time explaining the economics of all of this: 97% of all inmates are going to leave the penal system at some point in their lives, so it makes sense for us to help them become functioning members of society, contributing wealth back into the system, instead of spending taxpayer money only on retribution by simply punishing people for their crimes.

The goal of the program is to help inmates succeed once they leave the prison system. Among other things, inmates learn about anger management, money management, stress management, and how to get identification and other documentation once they leave the prison. They also learn interpersonal skills which will help them while they're incarcerated and once they've left the system.

The bottom line is that Dr. Wolff is trying to build empowerment for these women so that once they're released, they can show society that they are confident and pro-social individuals. She wants them to be able to step away from their labels and become what their potential will allow them to be.

We'll be publishing a Faculty Research Spotlight episode about her research once we've completed the video work that we were hired to do for this program. I look forward to sharing her work with the community.